Coffee startup Luckin plans to open 2 500 new stores in China this year to overtake Starbucks in the country What we want at the moment is scale and speed Luckin Chief Marketing Officer Yang Fei said at a presentation in Beijing according to Reuters Luckins strategy for its fast expansion process has focused on technology delivery and providing customers with steep discounts But the company recorded a loss of 800 million yuan 11634 million in 2018 which Fei said was expected Theres no point talking about profit he said explaining that subsidies to attract more customers are still an important part of the companys strategy for the next few years Luckin plans to open a total of more than 4 500 stores by the end of 2019 which would overtake Starbucks which has more than 3 600 stores in the country Backed by Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Private Ltd and China International Capital Corp Ltd Luckin raised 200 million in a Series B funding round in December bringing its valuation to 22 billion It also raised 200 million in July Luckin currently has stores in 21 major Chinese cities with a total of more than 1 700 shops The startup says it has a location within a 500-meter radius of anywhere in downtown Beijing and Shanghai For its part Starbucks said in October that it building a new store in China every 15 hours and that boosting growth in the country is one of its three strategic priorities said Starbucks CEO and President Kevin Johnson The company plans to open another 2 000 stores by 2021 In fact Starbucks builds more new company-operated locations in China than in its home country of the United States To us we open 500-plus stores a year but to us its not about 500 said Belinda Wong CEO of Starbucks China Its about opening a store 500 different times because youre in a different neighborhood and weve got to build that relationship with our customer LATEST INSIGHTS Our data and analytics team has developed a number of creative methodologies and frameworks that measure and benchmark the innovation thats reshaping the payments and commerce ecosystem Check out the latest PYMNTS report on PSD2